Monday, February 23, 2009

A Recap of the Oscars: You Wouldn't Take An Award From A Dead Guy, Would You?

Yesterday was Oscar Sunday! Hooray Oscar Sunday!

The best part about Oscar Sunday is that it gives me something to talk about today. This means I can just do the whole 'talk about things I saw' thing and not have to generate original thoughts of my own. You gotta love the movies, folks.

So, time to put on the fake Perez Hilton hat because Here Comes the Showbiz!!

Hey!! Hugh Jackman hosted the Oscars this year! He was pleasant and handsome for the ladies and not overtly bitter about not getting any sort of nod for Australia. I like Hugh Jackman, but I have to say for every song and dance routine that Hugh Jackman does I lose just a little bit of respect for Wolverine from the X-men movie franchise.

I found it funny that the opening number had to be stripped down due to the economy. This stripped down number took place beneath a gigantic and expensive Swarovski crystal curtain.

Ooh Irony!

Generally speaking, though, it was a good show. I appreciated the fact that they took the technical Oscars and subdivided them into logical groups like 'post production' and preproduction.' They went out of their way to make them understandable to the viewing audience. "Hey, this is part of the movie making process." It also made it a lot easier to go get a sandwich during the show and not worry about missing anything important.

Other changes to the Oscar format? Having five previous winners from each of the acting categories wax rhapsodic about how great all of the nominees were. Because being nominated isn't enough anymore you have to talk about how great people are at pretending to be someone else. It was still kind of cool to see the previous winners. The only exception? Tilda Swinton.

Yikes!

Speaking of acting awards, how much would it have sucked to be nominated for Best Supporting Actor this year? Yeah it's an honor to be nominated I'm sure, but there's no chance you're winning. Sorry Robert Downey Jr. Not this year. Maybe for Iron Man II.

Whose year was it? The girl from Titanic and Spicoli. Both Kate Winslet and Sean Penn have been nominated multiple times but never won. Now they can stop trying so hard with the risk taking and just make the silly action movies they've been longing to make.

And of course Slumdog Millionaire won best picture. It was well written and well produced and it wasn't four hours long. Didn't see the other movies and Frost/Nixon was good, but I am okay with this pick. The award did go a long way towards legitimizing the Indian cinema - provided that cinema is written, directed, and produced by pasty white guys with sketchy teeth.

I would like to thank the Academy for the fair warning: apparently the musical is back with a vengeance. They then followed up that announcement with a demonstration of the horrors waiting in the wings. I now know to keep my head down. It's going to be a long recession.

And finally, the Nat Topping Award for Best Acceptance Speech goes to whoever that Asian guy was who said "Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto." Well played, sir.